Star Hunting for the Rest of Us
02:00 AM Apr. 18, 2005 PT
When amateur astronomer Tim Puckett pointed his telescope at a distant galaxy and spotted an exploding star known as a supernova, he felt like he had just struck gold.
But then the clouds rolled in, threatening to keep him from taking the follow-up image that he needed to confirm his discovery.
Soon, he had a telescope in the Canary Islands trained on his star. Puckett snapped a photo, downloaded the image and confirmed that he had indeed discovered a supernova.
That he didn't even have to leave his house made the discovery no less exciting, said Puckett, who has discovered dozens of supernovae over the past 11 years. "It's sort of like you're in a gold rush and these are nuggets that you're finding in a river," he said.
It's a feeling that many amateur astronomers may soon experience if a New York-based company called Slooh has anything to do with it.
Slooh runs the web-enabled telescope and digital camera that Puckett and nearly 5,000 other space enthusiasts use to scan the skies. The company owns two telescopes on Mount Teide in the Canary Islands. For $50 a year, subscribers to the company's service can see what Slooh's telescopes see when they point to pre-selected sites. Or, they can reserve five-minute blocks of time on one of the telescopes to gaze at targets on their own.
So far, those targets have tended to focus on well-known objects in space, like planets, moons and stars. But, Slooh's founders hope that customers will be bolstered by the success of Puckett and will begin venturing into the unknown.
As an incentive, the company will be giving extra time to select amateurs who use the service to search for supernovae, asteroids and even comets, according to Michael Paolucci, president of Telescope Time, Slooh's parent company...cont'd
http://www.wired.com/news/space/0,2697,67232,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2
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